Aristotle thought God as pure form, as final cause and as prime mover. Aristotle provided for Aquinas the foundation on which he developed Scholasticism, which has been a distinctive feature of Christian philosophy of religion since the thirteenth century.

The basic principle of the philosophy of Aquinas is harmony of faith and reason. For him reason and faith cannot contradict each other, because they come from the same doctrine source. Aquinas welcomed truth wherever he found it and used it for the enrichment of Christian thought.

In his days conservative theologians and philosophers regarded Aristotle with suspicion and leaned towards the more traditional Christian Neo-Platonism. Thomas realized that their suspicion was due to the fact that Aristotle’s philosophy had been distorted by the commentators. Thus he wrote his own commentaries on Aristotle to show the essential soundness of his system and to convince contemporaries of its value for Christian theology.

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Thomas’ own philosophical views are best expressed in his theological work, especially his ‘Summa theological’. In these works he clearly distinguishes between the domain and methods of philosophy and theology. The philosopher seeks the first causes of things, beginning with data furnished by the senses. On the other hand, the subject of the theologian’s inquiry is God as revealed in sacred scripture. In theology, appeal to authority carries most weight; in philosophy, it carries least.

Aquinas claims that reason is capable of proving rationally the existence of God and refuting objections to the truths of faith. He strongly believes in the harmony of faith and reason. His view of God is in fact the God of Judaism and Christianity.

Aquinas never compromises Christian doctrine by bringing it into line with the current Aristotelianism, rather he modifies and amends the latter whenever it clashes with Christian belief. The harmony he has established between Aristotleianism and Christianity is not forced but achieved by a new understanding of philosophical principles, especially the notion of being, which he has conceived as the act of existing. Everything existing is created by God in the hierarchic order.

For Aquinas, God is pure being, or the act of existing. Creatures participate in being according to their essence. For example, man participates in being, or the act of existing, to the extent that his humanity, or essence, permits. The fundamental distinction between God and creatures is that creatures have a real composition of essence and existence, whereas God’s essence is his existence.

Aquinas adopted Aristotle’s teaching that the soul is man’s form and the body is his matter, but for Aquinas this does not entail, as it does for the Aristotelians, the denial of the immortality of the soul or the ultimate value of the individual.

In 1879, the scholastic system of Thomas Aquinas was officially proclaimed the ‘philosophy of Catholicism’. But he did not succeed in bridging the faith-reason gulf. After his death his theory was severely criticised.

(b) Saint Augustine:

Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo in Roman Africa is recognised as having been the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity. After reading treatise of Cicero, he felt an enthusiasm for philosophy. It meant not only a devotion to the pursuit of truth but a conviction of the superiority of a life devoted to that pursuit over any aims of secular ambition.

Augustine was greatly influenced by Manichaeism. Manichaeism is a materialistic dualism which suggests the creation of the world as the product of a conflict between light and dark substances. But Augustine was not satisfied with Manichaean notion of ultimate reality. Disillusioned with Manichaeism, Augustine turned to Neo-Platonism in which he found solutions to his problems about the being of being of God and the nature and origin of evil.

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Neo-Platonism is a spiritual monism—a philosophical doctrine holding that there is only one reality. According to this theory, the universe exists as a series of emanations or degenerations from absolute unity. From the transcendent one arises self- conscious mind or spirit, from mind comes soul or life. Soul is the intermediary between the spheres of spirit and of sense.

Matter is the lowest and last product of the supreme unity; and since the One is also the real and the good, the potentiality of evil is identified with unformed matter as the point of maximum departure from the One.

Evil itself is thus the least real of all things, being simply the absence of good. To reach the good, one must return into oneself, for it is the spirit at the heart of man’s inmost self that links him to the ultimate unity. In his seventh book of the Confessions, Augustine tells how in introspection he found God — the ‘changeless light’ which is the source of every intuitive recognition of truth and goodness.

This discovery of God was more than the conclusion of a process of reasoning, it was a mystical experience, a vision or touch that came and went. But it left behind it the answer to Augustine’s unsatisfied questionings, God is light, and evil is darkness. The changeless light of God is pure spiritual being, and the evil is non-entity, as darkness is the absence of light.

Augustine’s mystical experience, his awareness of God, had been momentary and fleeting. He believed that this could be only because he-had not made for himself the necessary total identification of supreme value with spirit, he was still himself entangled with the flesh.

In fact Neo-Platonism had reinforced the Manichaean principle that the way of return to God must be through escape from the body and for Augustine this meant primarily and immediately escape from the ties of sexuality.

In his treatise, Of True Religion, Augustine says the divine word in Christ is the mind or spirit of Plotinus, the great exponent of Neo-Platonism, illuminating the reason, through whom the human soul has access to the transcendent Godhead.

Christ’s human life is man’s example of the ascetic victory over the pains and pleasures of the flesh. Christian morals serve only to purify the soul for the life of contemplation and Christian faith is the necessary acceptance of the Church’s authority in this preliminary stage of training.

The decisive turn was given to Augustine’s thinking by his ordination to the priesthood which diverted his studies from philosophy to scripture. The knowledge of God and of the soul always remained from the time of his Baptism, the one and only knowledge that he desired.

He assured that it is the task of a Christian philosophy, guided by the scriptural revelation, to seek to know God through his image in the soul and this was the path he followed. He insisted that a true knowledge of the soul’s nature can be based only on the immediate awareness of self- consciousness.

The soul’s awareness of itself is of a trinity in unity. Augustine claimed that knowledge of one’s own being, of one’s own thinking, of one’s own willing is not open to doubt. There is an ego that exists, knows and wills. For Augustine the soul is not the entire man, but his better part. There remains a Platonic tendency to regard the body as a prison for the soul and a mark of man’s fallen state.

He laid emphasis on significance of free will and argued that when people exercise their will, they are acting in the image of God. Augustine suggests creation is ‘the will of a good God that good things should be’. The outgoing energy of creative love forms the basic principle of his entire theology.

All that exists is good insofar as it has being. Even the formless matter that is nearest to ‘not being’ is essentially good because God made it. The origin of evil is not to be sought in material existence. Augustine persistently refused to unload upon the material conditions of human life the responsibility for human wickedness.

Following Plato, Augustine argued that the ability to make true judgement never can be inserted into the mind from outside. The intuitive judgements like the propositions of mathematics are not the construction of the individual mind, because when properly formulated they are accepted by all minds alike. The individual thinker does not make the truth, he finds it; and the is able to do so because of Christ.

Christ is the ‘inward teacher’ who enables the individual to see the truth for himself when the individual listens to him. God will have given himself to men, and by sharing in his love men will love one another as he loves them, drawing from him the power to give themselves to others. Augustine’s masterpiece ‘The City of God’ espoused a religious philosophy of predestination. His theory is still widely used today by both Catholic and Protestant Churches.

(c) (i) Descartes:

Descartes claims that no idea is higher or dearest than the idea of God or the most perfect being. The idea of God as infinite, independent, omnipotent, omniscient, and creative substance has not come to us through the senses, nor have we formed it yourself. The power to conceive a being more perfect than myself, can have only come from someone who is more perfect in reality than.

Since we know that the infinite contains more reality than the finite, we conclude that the idea of the infinite has not been derived from the idea of the finite by abstraction and negation. It precedes the latter and I become conscious of my defects and my finitude only comparison with the absolute perfection of God. This idea then must have been implanted in me by God himself. The idea of God is an original endowment it is as innate as the idea of myself.

In order to escape solipsism, Descartes brings in the idea of God. Granting everything as a mistake, Descartes points out that the thinking is not a mistake. Everything is denied, but the denier remains. ‘Cogito ergo sum’ or ‘I think, therefore I am” is the first and most certain of all truths. As the self-consciousness of the thinking ego remains the only certainty, there is no conclusive basis for the assumption that anything exists beyond self, that the ideas which apparently come from without are really occasioned by external things and do not spring from the mind itself.

For our natural instinct to refer them to objects without us might well be deceptive. It is only through the idea of God, and by the help of the principle that the cause must contain at least as much reality as the effect, that I am taken beyond myself and assured that I am not the only thing in the world. For as this idea contains more of representative than I of actual reality, I cannot have been its cause.

To this empirical argument, which derives God’s existence from our idea of God, Descartes joins the ontological argument of Anselm, which deduces the existence of God from the concept of God. While the ideas of all other things include only the possibility of existence, necessary existence is inseparable from the concept of the most perfect being. God cannot be thought apart from existence; he has the ground of his existence in himself, he is cause Sui.

Finally, Descartes suggests, the idea of perfections which we do not possess can only have been imparted to us by a more perfect being than we, which has bestowed on us all that we are and all that we are capable of becoming. If I had created myself, I would have bestowed upon myself these absent perfections also.

And the existence of a plurality of causes is negated by the supreme perfection which I conceive in the idea of God, the indivisible unity of his attributes. Among the attributes of God his veracity is of special importance. It is impossible that God should will to deceive us; that he should be the cause of our errors.

God would be a deceiver, if he had endowed us with a reason to which error should appear true, even when it uses all its foresight in avoiding it and assents only to that which it clearly and distinctly perceives. Errors is man’s own fault, he falls into it only when he misuses the divine gift of knowledge, which includes its own standard. Thus Descartes finds new confirmation for his test of truth.

Erdmann has given a better defence of Descartes than the philosopher himself against the charge that reasons for the existence of God is arguing in a circle as the existence of God is proved by the criterion of truth, and then the latter by the former.

The criterion of certitude is the ratio cognoscenti of God’s existence, God is the ratio essential of the criterion of certitude. In the order of existence God is first, he creates the reason together with its criterion. In the order of knowledge the criterion precedes, and God’s existence follows from it.

Descartes thinks the only thing which raises man above the brute is his rational soul, which we are on no account to consider a product of matter, but which is a creation of God. The union of the soul or the mind with the body is not so loose that the mind merely dwells in the body, like a pilot in a ship, but it is intimately united.

Although the soul is united to the whole body, an especially active intercourse between them is developed at a single point, the pineal gland. This gland, together with the animal spirits passing to and from it, mediates between mind and body.

It is the point of union for the two­fold impressions from the right and left eyes and ears without which objects would be perceived double instead of single. It is the seat of the soul. Here the soul exercises a direct influence on the body and is directly affected by it.

Descartes believes that there are not several matters, but only one matter and only one world. This world is illimitable. Descartes argues against the atomic theory and against the finitude of the world. He argues against empty space.

He thinks matter, as well as space, has no smallest, indivisible parts, and the extension of the world has no end. In the identification of space and matter the former receives fullness from the latter, and the latter un-limitedness from the former. God created matter together with motion and rest, and maintains the same quantity of motion and rest in matter.

Descartes’ doctrine of man is dualistic. He contends that a soulless and lifeless bodily mechanism combines in man with rational soul. Further he suggests the origin of the world from chaos under the laws of motion. It is more easily conceivable if we think of the things in the world which gradually forms from elements, as the plant develops from the seed.

(ii) Spinoza:

Spinoza thinks substance is one and infinite. He says that independence is the essence of substantiality. By substance he understands that which is in itself and which is conceived by means of itself, i.e., the conception of which can be formed without the aid of the conception of any other thing.

An absolutely self-dependent being can neither be limited, nor occur more than once in the world. Infinity follows from its self-dependence, and its uniqueness from its infinity. Accepting Descartes’ definition of substance, Spinoza points out that if the definition of Descartes is to be strictly adhered to, there can be only one substance, God. Mind and matter can never be regarded as substance, since they are dependent on God for their existence.

Substance is the being which is dependent on nothing and on which everything depends, which itself uncaused, effects all else, which presupposes nothing but itself constitutes the presupposition of all. Substance is the being in things, that in things which constitutes their reality, which supports and produces them. Being the cause of all things, Spinoza calls it God. God does not mean for him a transcendent, personal spirit, but only the essential heart of things.

Neither by creation, nor by emanation things proceed from God. He also does not put them forth from himself, they do not tear themselves free from him, but they follow out of the necessary nature of God, as it follows from the nature of the triangle that the sum of its angles is equal to two right angles.

Since nothing exists out of God, his actions which do not follow from external necessity, are not constrained. But God is free cause, free in the sense that he does nothing except that toward which his own nature impels him, that he acts in accordance with the laws of his being. Action in view of ends must also be denied of the infinite.

To think of God as acting in order to the good is to make him dependent on something external to him and lacking in that which is to be attained by the action. With God, the ground of his action is the same as the ground of his existence.

God’s power and his essence coincide. He is the cause of himself. It would be a contradiction to hold that substance does not exist. God cannot be thought otherwise than existing, his concepts include his existence. To be self-caused means to exist necessarily.

The infinite substance stands related to finite, individual things, not only as the independent to the dependent, as the cause to the caused, as the one to the many and the whole to the parts, but also as universal to the particular, the indeterminate to the determinate.

A determination states that which distinguishes one thing from another, hence what it is not, expresses a limitation of it. God, who is free from every negation and limitation is to be conceived as the absolutely indeterminate. Then Spinoza equates substance with nature and God or more briefly: Substance≡ God ≡ nature.

The equation of God and substance had been announced by Descartes, but not adhered to, while Bruno had approached the equation of God and nature— Spinoza decisively completes both and combines them.

Spinoza declares God as the essence of all things. God is both the cause and effect. The attribute of Mind and Matter, i.e., thought and extension are two parallel attributes of the same absolute substance God. Spinoza believes that Mind is the expression of the infinite consciousness of God and Matter is the appearance of God’s unlimited extension.

By admitting only one substance God, Spinoza fails to explain the plurality, diversity, motion and change of the objects of the world. Actually he depends on mathematics largely while establishing his theory. According to him, the things which make up the world are related to- God as the properties of geometrical figure to its concepts, as the theorems to the axioms.

Instead of learning from mathematics, Spinoza’s theory became subservient to it. He not only compares the dependence of the effect on its cause to the dependence of a derivative principle on that from which it is derived, but fully equates the two. He thinks that in logical-mathematical ‘consequences’ he has grasped the essence of real ‘effects’. Spinoza has forgotten the diversity of the two fields which are not interchangeable.

Actually the rationalism of Descartes is heightened by Spinoza into the imposing confidence that absolutely everything is cognizable by the reason. It means that the intellect is able by its pure concepts and intuitions entirely to exhaust the multiform world of reality.

Spinoza rigorously applied the geometrical methods. If everything is to be cognizable through mathematics, then everything must take place necessarily. Even the thoughts, resolutions and actions of man cannot be free in the sense that they might have happened otherwise.

According to Spinoza, substance does not affect us by its mere existence, but through an attribute. By attribute he explains that the understanding perceives of substance as constituting the essence of it. The more reality a substance contains the more attributes it has.

Infinite substance possesses an infinite number, each of which gives expression to its essence, but of which two only fall within our knowledge. Among the innumerable divine attributes the human mind knows only those which it finds in itself, thought and extension. These two attributes correspond to two classes of modes. The most important modifications of extension are rest and motion.

Among the modes of thought are understanding and will. Spinoza thinks, all that takes place in the world is most rigorously determined. Every individual, finite, determinate thing and event is determined to its existence and action by another similarly finite and determinate thing or event.

And this cause is, in turn, determined in its existence and action by a further finite mode, and so on to infinity. Because of this endlessness in the series there is no first or ultimate cause in the phenomenal world. All finite causes are secondary causes the primary cause lies within the sphere of the infinite and is God himself.

Spinoza suggests, the soul is nothing but the idea of an actual body. Body or motion is nothing but the object or event in the sphere of extended actuality corresponding to an idea. No idea exists without something corporeal corresponding to it no body without at the same time existing as idea, or being conceived. In other words, everything is both body and spirit. Thus the order of the actions and passions of our body is simultaneous in nature with the order of the actions and passions of the mind. Spinoza treats the soul as a sum of ideas.

Spinoza viewed the universe pan-theistically as a single infinite substance, God and he attributed to this world as a whole the properties of a timeless logical system — of a complex of completely determined causes and effects.

In doing so Spinoza was simply seeking for man the series of ‘adequate’ ideas that furnish the intellect and constitute human freedom. Spinoza claims, ultimately, the wisdom that philosophy seeks is achieved when one perceives the universe in its wholeness, though the ‘intellectual love of God’ which merges the finite individual with the eternal unity and provides the mind with the pure joy that is the final achievement of its search.

(d) Nyaya-Vaisesika View:

(i) God:

In the Nyaya- sutra of Gautama we find short but explicit references to God. Kanada himself does not openly refer to God. His aphorism — ‘The authority of the Veda is due to its being His (or their) Word’, has been interpreted by the commentators in the sense that the Veda is the word of God.

The expression ‘Tadvachana’ may also mean that the Veda is the Word of the seers. But all great writers of the Nyaya-Vaisesika system including Prasastapada, Sridhara and Udayana are openly theistic and some of them give classical arguments to prove the existence of God.

The later Nyaya-Vaisesika school gives us an elaborate theory of God and connects it with the doctrine of liberation. They think the individual self can attain true knowledge of realities and, through it, the state of liberation only by the grace of God. Without God’s grace neither the true knowledge of the categories of philosophy nor the highest end of liberation is attainable by any individual.

God is the ultimate cause of the creation, maintenance and destruction of the world. He does not create the world out of nothing, but out of eternal atoms, space, time, ether, minds (manas) and souls.

(i) The causal argument:

All composite objects of the world formed by the combination of atoms (e.g. mountains, seas etc.), must have a cause because they are of the nature of effects, like a pot. That ‘all such objects of the world are effects’ follows first from their being made up of parts and secondly, from their possessing an intermediate magnitude. Space, time, ether and self are not effects, because these are infinite substances, not made up of parts.

Atoms of earth, water, light and air and the mind are not the effects of any cause, because they are simple, indivisible and infinitesimal substances. All other composite objects of the world, like mountains, seas, sun, moon, stars and the planets must be the effects of some cause, since they are both made up of parts and possess limited dimensions.

These objects are what they are because of the concurrence of a number of material causes. Therefore, there must be an intelligent cause (Karta) for all these effects. Without the guidance of an intelligent cause the material causes of these things cannot attain just that order, direction and co-ordination which enable them to produce these definite effects.

The intelligent cause must have a direct knowledge of the material causes (the atoms) as means, a desire to attain some end, and the power of will to accomplish or realize the end. He must also be omniscient, since only an omniscient being can have direct knowledge of such absolutely simple and infinitely small entities as atoms and the like. That is, He must be God and none but God.

(ii) The argument from adrsta:

It is maintained that our good actions produce a certain efficiency called merit (punya) and bad actions produce some deficiency called demerit (papa) in our souls and these persist long after our actions have ceased and disappeared. This stock of merit and demerit accruing from good and bad actions is called adrsta. There is nothing more mysterious in the concept of adrsta than in those of virtue and vice Adrsta, as the sum-total of merit and demerit accruing from our past actions, produces our present joys and sorrows. It is an unintelligent principle which cannot by itself lead to just that kind or degree of joy and sorrow which are due to our past actions. So it is argued that adrsta must be guided by some intelligent agent to produce its proper consequences.

Individual selves cannot be said to direct or control adrsta, for they do not know anything about their adrsta. Further adrsta defies frequently the control of individual’s will. So the intelligent agent, who guides adrsta through the proper channels to produce the proper effects is the eternal, omnipotent and omniscient Divine Being. It is God who controls our adrsta and dispenses all the joys and sorrows of our life, in strict accordance with it.

(iii) The argument from the authoritativeness of the scriptures:

Another argument for God’s existence is based on the authoritative character of the Vedas. Naiyayikas suggest the authority (pramanya) of the Vedas has its source in the supreme authority of their author (aptapramanya).

Just as the authoritativeness of the medical science, or for the matter of that, of all sciences, is derived from the scientists who founded them, so the authoritativeness of the Vedas is derived from some person who imparted that character to them. The validity of the Vedas may be tested like that of any science, by following their injunctions about worldly objects and seeing how they produce the desired result.

The individual self (jiva) cannot be the author of the Vedas, since the supramundane realities and the transcendent principles related in the Vedas cannot be the objects of the knowledge of any ordinary individual. Hence the author of the Vedas must be the supreme person who has a direct knowledge of all objects, past, present and future, finite, infinite and infinitesimal, sensible and super sensible. That is, the Vedas, like other scriptures, are revealed by God.

(iv) The testimony of sruti:

Sruti or the scripture bears unmistakable testimony to the existence of God. In our ancient scriptural texts .like the Vedas and Upanishads we find, ‘the highest eternal self is the Lord of all, the ruler of all, the protector of all. ‘and ‘the one God lies hidden in all, is all- pervading, is the inmost self of all and the controller and sustainer of all’ etc. But a critical philosopher may say that scriptural testimony has no importance for philosophy, it cannot give logically valid arguments in the attainment of true knowledge about anything human or divine.

So long as these are not forthcoming, the appeal to authority is of no avail. But God being the highest of all premises, i.e., the ultimate reality, there cannot be any anterior premise or premises from which we can deduce God as a conclusion.

The ontological proof starts from the idea of the most perfect being and infers its existence on the ground that without existence it would not be most perfect. The cosmological argument starts from the sensible world as a finite and conditioned reality, and argues to the existence of an infinite, unconditioned and super sensible reality as the ground thereof.

Similarly, the teleological proof lays stress on the adaptation of means to ends which we find so often in nature and infers the existence of an infinitely intelligent creator of the world. But all these proofs are vitiated by the fallacy of deducing the existence of God from the mere idea of Him.

To think of the conditioned world we have to think of the unconditioned, or to explain the adaptation of things we have to think of an intelligent cause. But to think of the existence of something is not to prove its existence, since the thought of existence is not actual existence. The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the existence of God cannot be proved by any argument.

Both Indian and Western thinkers admit that God must be known through direct experience and not through any process of reasoning. If there is no direct experience of God, we may pile up proof after proof and yet remain as unconvinced as ever with regard to the existence of God. If there is the direct experience, no proof is necessary.

For the knowledge of God or of any super sensuous reality, those who have no direct experience must depend on the authority of those rare blessed souls who are pure in heart and have seen God, like the Upanisadic sears and the Christian saints.

So sruti or the scripture, being the embodiment of the knowledge imparted by the enlightened sages arid seers of God, may be accepted as a source of right knowledge about God. The Vedantins, Sarikara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka, Vallabha and all, have rejected the Nyaya arguments and have fallen back on the sruti alone for the existence of God. Kant in the West and the Vedantins in India were ‘forced to destroy reason in order to make room for faith.’

ii) Soul:

The Nyaya-Vaisesikas adopt the realistic view of the soul. They believe in teleological creation. The material causes of this universe are the eternal atoms of earth, water, fire and air and the efficient cause is God. The infinite individual souls are co-eternal with atoms. God is co-eternal with atoms and souls and is external to both.

Nyaya advocates atomism, spiritualism, theism, realism and pluralism. Creation means combination of atoms and destruction means dissolution of these combinations through the motion supplied to or withdrawn from the atoms by the Unseen Powers working under the guidance of God.

The innumerable eternal atoms and the innumerable eternal souls are both beyond creation and destruction. God can neither create them nor destroy them. God is not the real creator as He is not the material cause of this universe.

There are innumerable souls and each is an independent, individual, eternal and all-pervading spiritual substance. It is the substratum of the quality of consciousness. Consciousness is not the essence of the self. It is not even an inseparable quality of the self, it is regarded as an adventitious attribute possessed by the self. It is adventitious because the self does not possess this quality during sleep. The self is a unique substance, to which all cognitions, feelings and conations belong to its attributes.

Desire, aversion and volition, pleasure, pain and cognitions are all qualities of the soul. These cannot belong to the physical substances, since they are not physical qualities perceived by the external senses. Hence we must admit that they are the peculiar properties of some substance other than and different from all physical substances. There are different selves in different bodies, because their experiences do not overlap but are kept distinct. The self is indestructible and eternal. It is infinite since it is not limited by time and space.

The body or the senses cannot be the self because consciousness cannot be the attribute of the material body or the senses. The body is by itself unconscious and unintelligent. The senses cannot explain functions like imagination, memory, ideation etc., which are independent of the external senses.

The manas too cannot take the place of the self. There is no such thing as pure consciousness unrelated to some subject and object. Consciousness cannot subsist without a certain locus. Hence the self is not consciousness as such, but a substance having consciousness as its attribute. The self is not mere consciousness or knowledge, but a knower, an ego or the ‘I’ (ahaiikarasraya) and also an enjoyer (bhokta).

According to some Naiyayikas, there cannot be a perception or direct cognition of the self. They suggest, the self is known either from the testimony of spiritual authorities or by inference from the functions of desire, aversion and volition, the feelings of pleasure and pain and the phenomenon of knowledge in us.

But these cannot be explained unless we admit a permanent self. Desire supposes some permanent self which had experienced pleasure in relation to certain objects in the past and which considers a present object to be similar to any of those past objects, and so strives to get possession of it. Similarly, aversion and volition cannot be explained without a permanent self. Again knowledge as a process of reflective thinking requires a permanent self which first desires to know something, then reflects on it and finally attains certain knowledge about it.

The later Naiyayikas go a step further and maintain that the self is directly known through internal or mental perception (manasapratyaksa). But some Naiyayikas claim the pure self cannot be an object of perception.

The self is perceived only as having a perceived quality like cognition, feeling or willing, and so the perceptual judgement is in the form, ‘I am knowing’, ‘I am happy’ and so forth, While one’s own self can be perceived, other selves in other bodies can only be inferred from their intelligent bodily actions.

All the systems of Indian philosophy believe in the attainment of mukti or liberation for the individual self. For the Naiyayikas, it is a state of negation, complete and absolute, of all pains and sufferings.

It is a state in which the soul is released from all the bonds of its connection with the body and the senses, so long as the soul is conjoined with a body, it is impossible for it to attain the state of utter freedom from pain.

In liberation, the soul must be free from the shackles of the body and the senses. Then the self exists as a pure substance free from all connection with the body, neither suffering pain, nor enjoying pleasure, nor having consciousness even.

Liberation is the negation of pain, not in the sense of suspension of it for a longer or shorter period of time, as in a good sleep or a state of recovery from some disease or that of relief from some bodily or mental affliction. It is absolute freedom from pain for all time to come. Liberation is the soul’s final deliverance from pain and attainment of eternal bliss.

To attain liberation one must acquire a true knowledge of the self and all other objects of experience (tattva-jnana). He must know the self as distinct from the body, the mind (manas) and the senses. Bondage is due to ignorance and karma. When individual realizes the true nature of the self as distinct from the body and all other objects, the wrong knowledge (mithya-jnana) is destroyed.

Now one ceases to be moved to action by passions and impulses. When a man becomes thus free from desires and impulses, he ceases to be affected by the effects of his present actions, done with no desire for fruits.

His past karmas or deeds being exhausted by producing their effects, the individual has to undergo no more birth in this world. The cessation of birth means the end of his connection with the body and, consequently, of all pain and suffering and that is liberation.

(iii)World:

Nyaya theory of the physical world is the same as Vaisesika theory of the world. In its attempt to explain the origin and destruction of the world, Vaisesika reduces all composite objects to the four kinds of atoms of earth, water, fire and air. Ether or akasa is not atomic. Vaisesika theory is sometimes characterized as the atomic theory of the world.

But it does not ignore the moral and spiritual principles governing the processes of composition and decomposition of atoms. Further five of the nine kinds of substances, to which all things may be reduced are not and cannot be reduced to material atoms. So the atomic theory of the Vaisesika has a background different from that of atomism of Western science and philosophy.

The Western philosophy is in principle a materialistic philosophy of the world. It explains the order and history of the world as the mechanical resultant of the fortuitous motions of innumerable atoms in infinite space and time, and in different directions. There is no mind or intelligent power governing and guiding the operations of the material atoms; these act according to blind mechanical view.

The atomism of Vaisesika is a phase of their spiritual philosophy. According to it, the ultimate source of the actions of atoms is to be found in the creative or the destructive will of the Supreme Being who directs the operations of atoms according to the unseen power, adrsta of individual souls and with reference to the end of moral dispensation.

The atomic theory of Vaisesika explains that part of the world which is non-eternal. It does not explain the eternal constituents of the universe, namely the four kinds of atoms and the five substances of ether, space, time, mind and soul. Vaisesika explains the order of creation and destruction of non-eternal objects.

The first combination of two atoms is called a dvyanuka or dyad, and a combination of three dyads is called triad or tryanuka. The tryanuka is also called the trasarenu and it is the minimum perceptible object according to the Vaisesika philosophy. The atom and dyad, being smaller than the triad, cannot be perceived, but are known through inference.

In Nyaya Vaisesika philosophy, world is a system of physical things and living beings having bodies with senses and possessing mind, intellect and egoism. On the whole, the order of the world is a moral order in which the life and destiny of all individual selves, are governed, not only by the physical laws of time and space, but also by the universal law of karma.

The starting point of the process of creation or destruction is the will of the Supreme Lord who is the ruler of the whole universe. The Lord conceives the will to create a universe in which individual beings may get their proper share of the experience of pleasure and pain according to their deserts or adrsta.

The process of creation and destruction of the world being beginning less (anadi), we cannot speak of a first creation of the world. In truth, every creation is preceded by state of destruction, and every destruction is preceded by some order of creation.

When God wills to create a world, the unseen forces of moral deserts in the eternal individual souls begin to function in the direction of creation and the active life of experience.

And it is the contact with souls, endowed with the creative function of adrsta that first sets in motion the atoms of air. Out of the combination of air-atoms, in the form of dyads and triads, arises the gross physical element (mahabhuta) of air, and it exists as an incessantly vibrating medium in the eternal akasa.

Then in a similar way, there is motion in the atoms of water, earth and light and the gross physical elements of water, earth and light arise. After this and by the mere thought of God, there appears the embryo of a world out of the atoms of light and earth.

God animates that great embryo with Brahma, the world- soul who is endowed with supreme wisdom, detachment and excellence. To Brahma, God entrusts the work of creation in its concrete details with proper adjustment between merit and demerit, on the one hand, and happiness and misery on the other.

The created world runs its course for many years. But it cannot continue to exist and endure for all time to come. God provides a way of escape from suffering for all livings for sometime by the destruction of the world. So the period of creation is followed by a state of destruction. The periods of creation and destruction make one complete cycle which has been repeating itself eternally.

(e) The Vedanta Philosophy: Sankara

(i) God:

Vedanta’ literally means ‘the end of the Vedas’. Primarily the word stood for the Upanishads though afterwards its denotation widened to include all thoughts developed out of the Upanishads. Upanishads discuss philosophical problems.

The Upanishads were many in number and developed in the different Vedic schools at different times and places. Various commentators have tried to interpret the revealed texts (Srutis) and the sutras. The author of each of these chief commentaries (bhasya) became the founder of a particular school of the Vedanta, e.g., Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Vallabha, Nimbarka, and many others.

Sankara believes ultimate reality is atman or Brahman which is pure consciousness and is devoid of all attributes and all categories of the intellect. Brahman associated with its potency maya or mulavidya appears as qualified Brahman or the Lord (Isvara) who is the creator, preserver and destroyer of this world which is His appearance.

God, according to Sankara, can be conceived from two different points of view. If we look at God from the ordinary practical standpoint (Vyavaharikadrsti) from which the world is believed to be real, God may be regarded as the cause, the creator, the sustainer, the destroyer of the world, and, therefore, also as an Omnipotent and Omniscient Being. He then appears as possessed of all these qualities (Saguna). God in this aspect is called Saguna Brahman or Isvara in Sankara’s philosophy. He is the object of worship.

Sanikara suggests that from the phenomenal point of view the world is quite real. It is a practical reality, not an illusion. It is the creation of God or Isvara. Creatorship of the world is not God’s essence (Svarupa-laksana). It is the description of what is merely accidental (tatasthalaksana) and does not touch His essence.

The description of God as conscious, real, infinite is an attempt to describe His essence (Svarupa), whereas the description of Him as creator, sustainer and destroyer of the world, or by any other characteristic connected with the world is a mere accidental description and it holds good only from the point of view of the world (Vyavaharikadrsti).

For understanding the higher aspect of God as He is really in Himself (without relation to the world) along with the lower aspect Sankara explained by giving the example of magician. God is like the magician who is a juggler only to those who are deceived by his trick. But to the discerning few who see through the trick and have no illusion, the juggler fails to be a juggler.

Similarly, those who believe in the world-show think of God through this show and call Him its creator, destroyer etc. But for those wise few who know that the world is a mere show, there is neither any real world nor any real creator.

The world, so long as it appears, is in God, the only Reality, just as the snake conjured out of the rope is nowhere except in the rope. But God is not really touched by the imperfections of the world just as the rope is not affected by any illusory characters of the snake, or even as the actor is not affected by the loss and gain of kingdom on the stage.

God as the object of worship is based essentially on a belief in the distinction between the worshipping self and the God worshipped. The reality of the limited self like that of a worldly object is based on ignorance—on the failure to realize that God is the only Reality. Worship and the God worshipped are bound up with our lower standpoint from which the world appears as real and God appears as endowed with the many qualities in relation to the world. It is this Saguna Brahma or Isvara who can be regarded as an object of worship.

Brahman from the higher or transcendental point of view (paramarthika-drsti) cannot be described by qualities which relate to the world. Brahman in this aspect is devoid of all distinctions, external as well as internal (sajatiya, vijatiya and svagata bhedas). Here Sankara differs from Ramanuja as Ramanuja believes that God is possessed of at least internal distinction (Svagata bheda), because within Him there are really distinct conscious and unconscious realities. Sankara says, Brahman is the only Reality.

It cannot be produced from itself because there can be neither any peculiarity nor any change in the eternal. Again it cannot be produced from anything other than itself for every other thing except Brahman is non-existent and unreal. Upanishads deny all predicates of God, even worship ability. This conception is developed by Sarikara by recognizing Brahman as nirguna or attribute less.

Sankara suggests that the origin of the world lies in the magical power (maya) of God. Maya as a power of God is indistinguishable from Him, just as the burning power of fire is from the fire itself. Ignorant people like us believe that the world is real and that, therefore, God is really qualified by maya, i.e. possessed of the power of creating the world (maya-visista).

But really creativity is not an essential character of God it is only an apparent accidental predicate that we illusorily ascribe to God. God is imminent (saguna) and God as transcendent reality (nirguna) are not two, any more than the man on the stage and the man outside the stage are two.

The first is only the apparent aspect of the second. The first is relative to the world, the second is irrelative or absolute. Sankara believes in the utility of worshipping God (as Saguna Brahma). It purifies the heart and prepares one for gradually reaching the highest view, i.e. only God. Without it, no God, immanent or transcendent, would ever be found.

(ii) Soul:

Sankara believes in unqualified monism. Soul or atman is the same as Brahman, It is pure consciousness. It is the Self which is Self-luminous and which transcends the subject-object duality and the trinity of knower, known and knowledge, and all the categories of the intellect. It is the Unqualified Absolute. It is the only Reality.

Brahman is everything and everything is Brahman. There is no duality, no diversity at all. This self can never be denied, for the very idea of denial presupposes it. It cannot be doubted, for all doubts rest on it. All assertions, all doubts, all denials presuppose it. It is not adventitious or derived. It is self-proved or original. All means of cognition (pramanas) are founded on it. To refute this self is impossible, for he who tries to refute it is the Self. The knower knows no change, for eternal existence is his very nature.

Self is essentially indescribable, for all descriptions and all categories fail to grasp it fully. As a matter of fact Brahman ultimately transcends all categories. The best method of describing it, therefore, is by negative terms.

But if we want to describe it positively, the best that we can say is that it is Pure Consciousness which is at once Pure Existence and Pure Bliss. All distinctions of substance and qualities, of subject and object, all determinations of the intellect cease here. Brahman is the only reality. It is the End and Brahmavidya or the knowledge of the non-difference of the jivatman and the Paramatman, is the means to realize this end.

Existence and consciousness are one. But ultimately Brahman is devoid of all characteristics. It cannot be defined as mere Existence and not as Consciousness. Again it cannot be defined as both Existence and Consciousness, for to admit that is to admit duality in Brahman. But all determinations of language and intellect are merged in this indeterminate and unqualified Reality i.e., Brahman. This Brahman or soul cannot be negated, for it is the ultimate ground on which all effects or phenomena are superposed.

(iii) World:

Ultimate Reality, according to Sankara is Atman or Brahman which is Pure Consciousness or Consciousness of the Pure Self which is devoid of all attributes and all categories of the intellect. Brahman associated with its potency, maya or mulavidya appears as the qualified Brahman or the Lord (Isvara) who is the creator, destroyer of this world which is His appearance.

Maya or Avidya is not pure illusion. It is not only absence of knowledge, but also is a positive wrong knowledge. It is neither existent nor non-existent nor both. In fact it is indescribable. It is false or mithya. But it is not a non-entity like a hare’s horn.

It is positive, it is potency. It is also called super imposition (adhyasa). A shell is mistaken as silver. The shell is the ground on which the silver is superimposed. When right knowledge arises, this error vanishes. Similarly Brahman is the ground on which the world appears through Maya. When right knowledge dawns and the essential unity of the jiva with the Paramatman is realized, Maya or Avidya vanishes.

Sankara emphasizes that from the phenomenal point of view the world is quite real. It is not an illusion. It is a practical reality. He distinguishes the dream state from the waking state. Things seen in a dream are quite true as long as the dream lasts they are sublated only when we are awake. Similarly, the world is quite real so long as true knowledge does not dawn.

But dreams are private. They are creations of the jiva. The world is public. It is the creation- of Isvara. Jiva is ignorant of the essential unity and takes only diversity as true and wrongly regards himself as agent and enjoyer. Avidya conceals the unity and projects names and forms. Isvara never misses the unity. Maya has only its Viksepa aspect over him.

The Highest Brahman is both the locus and the object of Maya. Sankara’s theory takes the world to be a phenomenal appearance of Brahman. Thus it is called as Brahmavivartavada. The world is neither a real creation by Brahman nor a real modification of Brahman.

Sankara says that whenever we talk of creation, we do not mean a real creation, we mean only a phenomenal appearance of Brahman due to Avidya and this creation-appearance is real only as long as Avidya lasts. When Avidya is removed by right knowledge, God, the Ruler, Soul, the Enjoyer, and World, the enjoyed all are merged in the Highest Brahman.

(f) Ramanuja:

Ramanujacharya attempts a harmonious combination of absolutism with personal theism. The attempt is not new. We find it in the Gita, in the Mahabharata. Ramanuja wrote Shri-bhasya, Gita-bhasya, Vedanta-sara, Vedanta- dipa etc.

His view is known as Visistadvaita or non- dualism qualified by difference. Ramanuja recognizes three things as ultimate and real. These are matter, souls and God. Though all are equally real, the first two are absolutely dependent on God. Though they are substances in themselves, yet in relation to God, they become His attributes. They are the body of God, who is their soul.

(i) God:

In Ramanuja’s philosophy, God is identified with the Absolute. He is Brahman arid Brahman must be a qualified unity. God stands for the whole universe and matter and souls form his body, He being their soul. As the Absolute, the ultimate unity- in-and-through-trinity, the concrete Whole, God may be viewed through two stages — as cause and as effect.

During the state of dissolution (pralaya), God remains as the cause with subtle matter and unembodied souls forming His body. The whole universe lies latent in Him. During the state of creation (Srsti), the subtle matter becomes gross and the unembodied souls (except the nitya and mukta souls) become embodied according to their karmas. In this effect – state the universe becomes manifest. The former state is called the causal state of Brahman, while the latter state is the effect-state of Brahman.

God is considered as the immanent inner controller (antaryami), the qualified substance who is in Himself changeless and is the unmoved Mover of this world-process. In His essence He does not suffer change which is said to fall to the lot of His attributes or modes only. Ramanuja makes no distinction between an attribute and a mode.

Matter and souls may be called either attributes or modes (prakara). They are absolutely dependent on God and are inseparable from Him. They are His body and He is their soul. Just as in the case of an ordinary individual only the body undergoes change while the soul is changeless, similarly it is only the body of God, i.e. the matter and the individual souls, that undergo changes and not God himself who is their soul. Hence God is the unchanging controller of all change and the limitations of matter as well as the miseries and the imperfections of the finite souls do not affect the essence of God.

Again God is transcendent. He is the perfect personality. He has a Divine body. Embodiment is not the cause of bondage. It is Karma which is the cause of bondage. Hence God, though embodied, is not bound, for He is the Lord of Karma. Actually Ramanuja has tried to fuse the immanent Upanisadic.

Absolute with the transcendent God of the Bhagavata theism. God as the perfect personality is devoid of all demerits and possesses all merits. He has infinite knowledge and bliss. He has a

Divine body and is the creator, preserver and destroyer of this universe. His qualities like knowledge, power and mercy etc. are eternal, infinite, numberless, unlimited, undefiled and matchless. He is knowledge to the ignorant, power to the powerless, mercy to the guilty, grace to the afflicted etc.

Ramanuja believes that God manifests Himself in five forms in order to help his devotees. He is the AntaryamI (first form) and Supreme Lord (second form). He reveals Himself through four-fold Vyuha, it means he is the ruler of the cognitive aspect of the souls, destroyer of this universe, ruler of the emotional aspect of the souls and the creator of the Universe.

When God descends down on this earth in the human or the animal form, he is called as Avatara which is the fourth form. He does so in order to protect the good, punish the wicked and restore the dharma, the Law.

The fifth and last form of God is when out of His extreme mercy He takes the form of the holy idols enshrined in the recognised temples like Shrirangam so that His devotees might get opportunities to serve Him physically.

(ii) Soul:

Ramanuja’s conception of chit or the individual soul is an attribute to mode of God and forms part of His body. It is a spiritual substance in itself and is absolutely real. It is an eternal point of spiritual light. It is beyond creation and destruction. In the state of creation, it is embodied according to its karmas, while in the state of dissolution and in the state of liberation, it remains in itself.

But in the state of dissolution, it is tinged with karmas, so that in the next cycle of creation, it has to descend to the mundane life and to become embodied in order to reap the fruits of its karmas. The relation of the soul and karma is said to be beginning less. But in liberation, the soul shines in its pristine purity untouched by karma and therefore can never descend to the mundane existence any more.

It is eternal, real, unique, uncreated and imperishable, yet it is finite and individual, being only a part or a mode of God. Hence it is regarded as atomic (anu) in size. As an atomic point of spiritual light, it is imperceptible, eternal and changeless.

Though it is really subjected to earthly existence and to the various imperfections, defects and miseries which the worldly life implies, yet these do not affect its essence. In its essence it is changeless and perfect.

Through all its birth and deaths—which do not touch its essence—it maintains its identity and essential nature. The soul is different from its body, sense-organs, mind, vital breaths and even cognition. In sarrisara, it wrongly identifies itself with these due to ignorance and karma.

Ramanuja suggests that there are innumerable individual souls. They are essentially alike, like the monads of Leibnitz or the jivas of the Jainas, and they differ only in number. Ramanuja advocates qualitative monism and quantitative pluralism of souls. The soul is conceived as a real knower, a real agent and a real enjoyer.

Action and enjoyment are regarded as merely different states of knowledge which is said to be the essence of the soul. The soul is a self-luminous substance as well as a self- conscious subject. It manifests itself without the aid of knowledge and it is also self-conscious.

Soul is the substance of its dharma-bhuta-jnana which is capable of contraction and expansion. It knows the objects through its knowledge which reveals itself as well as the objects to be known by the self. Knowledge exists for the self and through knowledge shows itself and the object, it can know neither.

The self alone can know itself as well as its object, though it can reveal only itself not its object which is revealed for it by knowledge. Knowledge or consciousness is not an accidental property of the self. It is its very essence. The self is of the nature of knowledge. It is the substance of knowledge which is its essential and inseparable attribute.

Ramanuja describes three classes of souls. To the first belong the ever-free (nitya-mukta) souls which were never bound. The second is Released or Liberated (mukta) souls who were once bound but who obtained liberation through their action, knowledge and devotion. The Liberated soul becomes omniscient because its dharmabhuta- jnana is restored to its original status and in the absence of karmic obstructions comprehends all objects.

In liberation soul enjoys infinite knowledge and everlasting bliss. The third type of soul is the Bound (Buddha) souls who are wondering in Sanisara on account of ignorance and bad karmas. These are further divided into four classes— superhuman, human, animal and immobile.

Ramanuja says though the individual soul is absolutely real, yet it is not independent. It is utterly dependent on God. It is an attribute or a mode of God who is its substance. It is the body of God who is its soul.

It is supported by God, controlled by God and utilized by God. God is the master of law of karma. He is the inner controller of the soul. Yet the soul has got freedom of will and God, as a self- determined whole, does not interfere with it.

(iii) World:

Ramanuja takes the Upanisadic accounts of creation. According to him, creation is absolutely real. The world and souls are as real as God Himself. They are neither created nor are they destroyed. Ramanuja believes in Satkaryavada, the theory that the effect necessarily pre-exists in its material cause. He holds that God, who is omnipotent, creates the manifold world out of Himself by a gracious act of will.

Within the All-inclusive God (Brahman) there are both unconscious matter (acit) and the finite spirits (cit). The first is the source of the material objects and as such called prakrti (root or origin) whose authority Ramanuja highly values. This prakrti is admitted, as in the Sarikhya, to be an uncreated (aja) eternal reality.

But unlike the Sarikhya, Ramanuja believes that it is a part of God and controlled by God, just as the human body is controlled from within by the human soul. During the state of dissolution (pralaya) the unconscious nature of prakrti remains in a latent, subtle and undifferentiated form. God creates out of this the world of diverse objects in accordance with the deeds of the souls in the world prior to the last dissolution.

Ramanuja believes in the parinamvada form of satkaryavada which means that the material cause really changes itself in the form of its effect. His view is known as Brahmaparinamvada because according to it, the entire universe including the material world and the individual souls is a real modification of Brahman.

The world of matter, souls are as real as God. Impelled by the omnipotent will of God the undifferentiated subtle matter gradually becomes transformed into three kinds of subtle elements—fire, water and earth. These differentiated elements manifest also the three kinds of qualities known as sattva, rajas and tamas.

Gradually the three subtle elements become mixed up together and give rise to all gross objects which we perceive in the material world. In every object in the world there is a mixture of three elements. This process of triplication is known as trivrtkarana.

Thus Ramanuja claims that creation is a fact and the created world is as real as Brahman. Regarding the Upanisadic texts which deny the multiplicity of objects and asserts the unity of all things, Rama­nuja holds that these texts do not mean to deny the reality of the many objects, but only teach that in all of them there is the same Brahman, on which all are dependent for existence. What the Upanishads deny is the independence of objects, but not their dependent existence.

It is true, Ramanuja admits that God has been described as wielder of a magical power, i.e., maya, but this only means that the inscrutable power by which God creates the world is as wonderful as that of a magician. The word ‘maya’ stands for God’s power of creating wonderful objects.

Therefore, Ramanuja denies, that creation and the created world are illusory. To strengthen this position he holds that all knowledge is true and that there is no illusory object anywhere. Even in the case of so called illusion of snake in the rope, he points out that there is something common element (fire, water, earth), exist in both of these. Therefore no unreal object is perceived.